Part 14

I transmit herewith, for the constitutional action of the Senate, two treaties, one made on the 18th day of November, 1854, by Joel Palmer, superintendent of Indian affairs, on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and headmen of the Quil-si-eton and Na-hel-ta bands of the Chasta tribe of Indians, the Cow-non-ti-co, Sa-cher-i-ton, and Na-al-ye bands of Scotans, and the Grave Creek band of Umpqua Indians in Oregon Territory; the other, made on the 29th of November, 1854, by Joel Palmer, superintendent of Indian affairs, on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and headmen of the confederated bands of the Umpqua tribe of Indians and the Calaponas, residing in Umpqua Valley, Oregon Territory.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _February 21, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate to Congress a communication of this date from the Secretary of the Interior, with the accompanying paper, and recommend that the appropriation[42] therein asked for be made.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 42: For extending and improving the culvert running from the United States Capitol Grounds down the center of South Capitol street toward the canal.]

WASHINGTON, _February 22, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

In compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 21st instant, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, inclosing a copy of the letter[43] addressed to the Department of State on the 17th November, 1852, by Mr. Joaquin J. de Osma, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the Republic of Peru.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 43: Proposing a settlement of the Lobos Islands controversy.]

WASHINGTON, _February 23, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate to Congress herewith a communication of this date from the Secretary of the Interior, with accompanying estimates, and recommend that the appropriation[44] therein asked for be made.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 44: To fulfill treaty stipulations with the Wyandotte Indians.]

WASHINGTON, _February 24, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

In compliance with the resolution of the Senate of the 22d instant, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, together with the copy of a communication from Francis W. Rice,[45] therein referred to.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 45: Late United States consul at Acapulco, relative to outrages committed upon him by authorities of Mexico.]

WASHINGTON, _February 26, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of the Navy, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 20th instant, requesting the President "to communicate to the Senate a copy of the order issued by the Navy Department to the officer in command of the Home Squadron in pursuance of which the United States sloop of war _Albany_ was ordered on her last cruise to Carthagena and Aspinwall, etc.; also of the orders given by such officer to Commander Gerry to proceed upon such cruise, and also of any reports or letters from the captain of the _Albany_ on the necessity of repairs to said vessel."

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _February 27, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to Congress herewith a communication of this date from the Secretary of the Interior, and recommend that the appropriation[46] therein asked for be made.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 46: For surveying public lands in the northern part of Minnesota Territory acquired from the Chippewa Indians.]

WASHINGTON, _February 27, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate herewith, for the consideration of Congress, a letter of this date from the Secretary of the Interior, and accompanying paper, recommending certain appropriations[47] on account of the Indian service.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 47: For running the boundary line between the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations of Indians and for negotiations with the Menominee Indians.]

WASHINGTON, _February 27, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I communicate to the Senate herewith, for its constitutional action thereon, a treaty made in this city on the 22d instant between the United States and the Mississippi, the Pillager, and the Lake Winnibigoshish bands of Chippewa Indians.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _February 28, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

For eminent services in the late war with Mexico, I nominate Major-General Winfield Scott, of the Army of the United States, to be lieutenant-general by brevet in the same, to take rank as such from March 29, 1847, the day on which the United States forces under his command captured Vera Cruz and the castle of San Juan de Ulua.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _February 28, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I communicate to the Senate herewith, for its constitutional action thereon, a treaty made and concluded in this city on the 27th day of February, 1855, between George W. Manypenny, commissioner on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and delegates of the Winnebago tribe of Indians.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _March 1, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I communicate to Congress herewith a copy of an act of the legislature of the State of Texas, approved the 11th of February, 1854, making partial provision for running and marking the boundary line between the said State and the territories of the United States from the point where the said line leaves the Red River to its intersection with the Rio Grande, and appropriating $10,000 toward carrying the same into effect, when the United States shall have made provision by the enactment of a law for the appointment of the necessary officers to join in the execution of said survey.

It will be perceived from the accompanying papers that the early demarcation of said boundary line is urgently desired on the part of Texas, and, acquiescing in the importance thereof, I recommend that provision be made by law for the appointment of officers to act in conjunction with those to be appointed by the State of Texas, and that the sum of $10,000 at least be appropriated for the payment of their salaries and necessary incidental expenses.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _March 2, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I communicate to the Senate herewith, for its constitutional action thereon, the articles of a treaty negotiated on the 4th of January, 1855, between Joel Palmer, superintendent of Indian affairs in Oregon, and the chiefs of certain confederated tribes of Indians residing in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _March 2, 1855_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

I herewith submit a report of the Secretary of War, containing all the information that can now be furnished in reply to the resolution of the Senate of the 28th ultimo, requesting "a statement of the number of muskets, rifles, and other arms and equipments delivered to the State arsenals, respectively, the number remaining on hand, and the number sold and accounted for; also, the date and amount of such sales."

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, _March 2, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to Congress herewith a communication of this date from the Secretary of the Interior, with accompanying papers,[48] and recommend that the appropriations therein asked for be made.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 48: Estimates of appropriations necessary for carrying out the bounty-land law.]

WASHINGTON, _March 2, 1855_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

I transmit to Congress herewith a communication of this date from the Secretary of the Interior, with its inclosure,[49] and recommend that the appropriations therein asked for be made.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 49: Additional estimate of appropriations necessary for pay of Indian agents.]

WASHINGTON, _March 3, 1855_.

_To the House of Representatives_:

I transmit herewith to the House of Representatives a report from the Secretary of State, with accompanying documents,[50] in answer to their resolutions of the 30th of January and 23d February last.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[Footnote 50: Correspondence relative to the causes disturbing the friendly relations between Spain and the United States and instructions to United States diplomatic agents relative to the same; correspondence relative to Cuba, etc.]

VETO MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, _February 17, 1855_.

_To the House of Representatives_:

I have received and carefully considered the bill entitled "An act to provide for the ascertainment of claims of American citizens for spoliations committed by the French prior to the 31st of July, 1801," and in the discharge of a duty imperatively enjoined on me by the Constitution I return the same with my objections to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.

In the organization of the Government of the United States the legislative and executive functions were separated and placed in distinct hands. Although the President is required from time to time to recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, his participation in the formal business of legislation is limited to the single duty, in a certain contingency, of demanding for a bill a particular form of vote prescribed by the Constitution before it can become a law. He is not invested with power to defeat legislation by an absolute veto, but only to restrain it, and is charged with the duty, in case he disapproves a measure, of invoking a second and a more deliberate and solemn consideration of it on the part of Congress. It is not incumbent on the President to sign a bill as a matter of course, and thus merely to authenticate the action of Congress, for he must exercise intelligent judgment or be faithless to the trust reposed in him. If he approve a bill, he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated for such further action as the Constitution demands, which is its enactment, if at all, not by a bare numerical majority, as in the first instance, but by a constitutional majority of two-thirds of both Houses.

While the Constitution thus confers on the legislative bodies the complete power of legislation in all cases, it proceeds, in the spirit of justice, to provide for the protection of the responsibility of the President. It does not compel him to affix the signature of approval to any bill unless it actually have his approbation; for while it requires him to sign if he approve, it, in my judgment, imposes upon him the duty of withholding his signature if he do not approve. In the execution of his official duty in this respect he is not to perform a mere mechanical part, but is to decide and act according to conscientious convictions of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the proposed law. In a matter as to which he is doubtful in his own mind he may well defer to the majority of the two Houses. Individual members of the respective Houses, owing to the nature, variety, and amount of business pending, must necessarily rely for their guidance in many, perhaps most, cases, when the matters involved are not of popular interest, upon the investigation of appropriate committees, or, it may be, that of a single member, whose attention has been particularly directed to the subject. For similar reasons, but even to a greater extent, from the number and variety of subjects daily urged upon his attention, the President naturally relies much upon the investigation had and the results arrived at by the two Houses, and hence those results, in large classes of cases, constitute the basis upon which his approval rests. The President's responsibility is to the whole people of the United States, as that of a Senator is to the people of a particular State, that of a Representative to the people of a State or district; and it may be safely assumed that he will not resort to the clearly defined and limited power of arresting legislation and calling for reconsideration of any measure except in obedience to requirements of duty. When, however, he entertains a decisive and fixed conclusion, not merely of the unconstitutionality, but of the impropriety, or injustice in other respects, of any measure, if he declare that he approves it he is false to his oath, and he deliberately disregards his constitutional obligations.

I cheerfully recognize the weight of authority which attaches to the action of a majority of the two Houses. But in this case, as in some others, the framers of our Constitution, for wise considerations of public good, provided that nothing less than a two-thirds vote of one or both of the Houses of Congress shall become effective to bind the coordinate departments of the Government, the people, and the several States. If there be anything of seeming invidiousness in the official right thus conferred on the President, it is in appearance only, for the same right of approving or disapproving a bill, according to each one's own judgment, is conferred on every member of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.

It is apparent, therefore, that the circumstances must be extraordinary which would induce the President to withhold approval from a bill involving no violation of the Constitution. The amount of the claims proposed to be discharged by the bill before me, the nature of the transactions in which those claims are alleged to have originated, the length of time during which they have occupied the attention of Congress and the country, present such an exigency. Their history renders it impossible that a President who has participated to any considerable degree in public affairs could have failed to form respecting them a decided opinion upon what he would deem satisfactory grounds. Nevertheless, instead of resting on former opinions, it has seemed to me proper to review and more carefully examine the whole subject, so as satisfactorily to determine the nature and extent of my obligations in the premises.

I feel called upon at the threshold to notice an assertion, often repeated, that the refusal of the United States to satisfy these claims in the manner provided by the present bill rests as a stain on the justice of our country. If it be so, the imputation on the public honor is aggravated by the consideration that the claims are coeval with the present century, and it has been a persistent wrong during that whole period of time. The allegation is that private property has been taken for public use without just compensation, in violation of express provision of the Constitution, and that reparation has been withheld and justice denied until the injured parties have for the most part descended to the grave. But it is not to be forgotten or overlooked that those who represented the people in different capacities at the time when the alleged obligations were incurred, and to whom the charge of injustice attaches in the first instance, have also passed away and borne with them the special information which controlled their decision and, it may be well presumed, constituted the justification of their acts.

If, however, the charge in question be well founded, although its admission would inscribe on our history a page which we might desire most of all to obliterate, and although, if true, it must painfully disturb our confidence in the justice and the high sense of moral and political responsibility of those whose memories we have been taught to cherish with so much reverence and respect, still we have only one course of action left to us, and that is to make the most prompt and ample reparation in our power and consign the wrong as far as may be to forgetfulness.

But no such heavy sentence of condemnation should be lightly passed upon the sagacious and patriotic men who participated in the transactions out of which these claims are supposed to have arisen, and who, from their ample means of knowledge of the general subject in its minute details and from their official position, are peculiarly responsible for whatever there is of wrong or injustice in the decisions of the Government.

Their justification consists in that which constitutes the objection to the present bill, namely, the absence of any indebtedness on the part of the United States. The charge of denial of justice in this case, and consequent stain upon our national character, has not yet been indorsed by the American people. But if it were otherwise, this bill, so far from relieving the past, would only stamp on the present a more deep and indelible stigma. It admits the justice of the claims, concedes that payment has been wrongfully withheld for fifty years, and then proposes not to pay them, but to compound with the public creditors by providing that, whether the claims shall be presented or not, whether the sum appropriated shall pay much or little of what shall be found due, the law itself shall constitute a perpetual bar to all future demands. This is not, in my judgment, the way to atone for wrongs if they exist, nor to meet subsisting obligations.

If new facts, not known or not accessible during the Administration of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, or Mr. Monroe, had since been brought to light, or new sources of information discovered, this would greatly relieve the subject of embarrassment. But nothing of this nature has occurred.

That those eminent statesmen had the best means of arriving at a correct conclusion no one will deny. That they never recognized the alleged obligation on the part of the Government is shown by the history of their respective Administrations. Indeed, it stands not as a matter of controlling authority, but as a fact of history, that these claims have never since our existence as a nation been deemed by any President worthy of recommendation to Congress.

Claims to payment can rest only on the plea of indebtedness on the part of the Government. This requires that it should be shown that the United States have incurred liability to the claimants, either by such acts as deprived them of their property or by having actually taken it for public use without making just compensation for it.

The first branch of the proposition--that on which an equitable claim to be indemnified by the United States for losses sustained might rest--requires at least a cursory examination of the history of the transactions on which the claims depend. The first link which in the chain of events arrests attention is the treaties of alliance and of amity and commerce between the United States and France negotiated in 1778. By those treaties peculiar privileges were secured to the armed vessels of each of the contracting parties in the ports of the other, the freedom of trade was greatly enlarged, and mutual obligations were incurred by each to guarantee to the other their territorial possessions in America.

In 1792-93, when war broke out between France and Great Britain, the former claimed privileges in American ports which our Government did not admit as deducible from the treaties of 1778, and which it was held were in conflict with obligations to the other belligerent powers. The liberal principle of one of the treaties referred to--that free ships make free goods, and that subsistence and supplies were not contraband of war unless destined to a blockaded port--was found, in a commercial view, to operate disadvantageously to France as compared with her enemy, Great Britain, the latter asserting, under the law of nations, the right to capture as contraband supplies when bound for an enemy's port.

Induced mainly, it is believed, by these considerations, the Government of France decreed on the 9th of May, 1793, the first year of the war, that "the French people are no longer permitted to fulfill toward the neutral powers in general the vows they have so often manifested, and which they constantly make for the full and entire liberty of commerce and navigation," and, as a counter measure to the course of Great Britain, authorized the seizure of neutral vessels bound to an enemy's port in like manner as that was done by her great maritime rival. This decree was made to act retrospectively, and to continue until the enemies of France should desist from depredations on the neutral vessels bound to the ports of France. Then followed the embargo, by which our vessels were detained in Bordeaux; the seizure of British goods on board of our ships, and of the property of American citizens under the pretense that it belonged to English subjects, and the imprisonment of American citizens captured on the high seas.

Against these infractions of existing treaties and violations of our rights as a neutral power we complained and remonstrated. For the property of our injured citizens we demanded that due compensation should be made, and from 1793 to 1797 used every means, ordinary and extraordinary, to obtain redress by negotiation. In the last-mentioned year these efforts were met by a refusal to receive a minister sent by our Government with special instructions to represent the amicable disposition of the Government and people of the United States and their desire to remove jealousies and to restore confidence by showing that the complaints against them were groundless. Failing in this, another attempt to adjust all differences between the two Republics was made in the form of an extraordinary mission, composed of three distinguished citizens, but the refusal to receive was offensively repeated, and thus terminated this last effort to preserve peace and restore kind relations with our early friend and ally, to whom a debt of gratitude was due which the American people have never been willing to depreciate or to forget. Years of negotiation had not only failed to secure indemnity for our citizens and exemption from further depredation, but these long-continued efforts had brought upon the Government the suspension of diplomatic intercourse with France and such indignities as to induce President Adams, in his message of May 16, 1797, to Congress, convened in special session, to present it as the particular matter for their consideration and to speak of it in terms of the highest indignation. Thenceforward the action of our Government assumed a character which clearly indicates that hope was no longer entertained from the amicable feeling or justice of the Government of France, and hence the subsequent measures were those of force.